Google changed the AdSense ads by making less of the AdSense ad area clickable to prevent accidental clicks. Fair enough. In theory if the CTR drops because their are less accidental clicks, then the amount paid per click should go up because the clicks that do happen are more purposeful. Or something like that.
Anyway, some people seem to have seen their CTR drop through the floor. Others haven’t been affected that badly by the change to the AdSense ads. It hasn’t seemed to change my CTR one way or the other on any of my blogs.
After noticing something earlier today, I went on a hunt for people running sidebar ads and was actually surprised by how many blogs that I know used to run AdSense that don’t anymore. But, eventually, I found a post on mommy bytes that had the ads in the right sidebar. The clickable area was indeed the new smaller area. Here is a poor image to show it, but feel free to click over to Angela’s site to check for yourself.
Then I went did a Google search for “cats” and came up with this:
Cool. Fewer accidental clicks all around.
But wait. I said I noticed something that made me start this investigation in the first place. I was in my Gmail account reading a newsletter email from Yaro Starak and had my house hovering over one of the ads that Gmail shows and noticed it has a different clickable area:
So wait a second. Google still gets to use the big clickable email on ads that they display on Gmail. And then they put those ads right next to the scrollbar where people have to click to read the rest of their emails. That can’t possibly be a recipe for accidental clicks.
But I’m sure Google has something in place to determine which of those clicks were accidental and return that money to the advertisers.
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Stupid Adsense, I’m still miles away from my first check. But thanks for the mention anyway!
It took me over a year to get my first check. Then magically and for no particular reason it picked up overnight to where I could get a check every 2-3 months. I won’t be retiring anytime soon.
Google started with a great policy of “do no evil” and then they got big, rich, and a lot of the early guys started leaving. They know how to make money for themselves and they know more about the Internet than anyone else out there.
I’m not sure if this is an example of them pushing what is allowed for a “Not Evil” company or if it is more of an oversight somewhere. The google search results use the new ad clickable area. If they were really trying to keep an advantage for themselves that others don’t get, I think they would have used the old ad format on the search results, too.
I’m growing more and more disenchanted with Adsense. If this is an example of implementing changes first and working out the bugs later, they really should work out the bugs on their own dime, not the web publishers. It’s only making them look less reliable in my eyes.
I do get a check from Adsense each month now, but it’s only from my health related website. I barely offer adsense any space on any of my other sites, if at all.
Great find!
Boy I hope it’s oversight and not nasty trickery.
well… adsense checks DO exist then… that’s comforting to know!
But I noticed that since Google has ZEROED my page rank, my adsense revenues seem to be holding steady (at trickling) when I expected it to go to nothing too. It’s a strange, strange world we live in…
I, too, am now to the point where I get an Adsense check each month. I have learned two big things over the past year – you have to experiment with your Adsense placement to get the right combination for your site and it’s best to diversify – don’t rely on Google for everything.
Char,
I’ve found that the less I worry about how much I am making on any given day, the better I tend to do. It seems like writing 2 or 3 posts a day on a site really seems to help improve traffic, comments, and income.
My Adsense revenue has decreased ever since this changes has been made… I have to redesign the site to blend it.